"Oh what a day" this will be, I said at the end of yesterday's Bleatage. I was correct for all the wrong reasons. I had a professional situation that was
gnawing at me, and it turned out to be completely nothing. It is impossible to describe how wrong I was.
So there was that! And then the sun came out. And then I had two text conversations with Daughter on two unrelated matters, spanning hours, and her level of ability to argue with clarity and precision was extraordinary. All those nights in the kitchen arguing about this or that were intended as lessons in rhetoric more than my attempt to be RIGHT. Know your opponent's position, apply second- and third-stage thinking, stay on point, note when the argument forks and cauterize it to deal with it later, avoid appeals to emotion, use neutral language, and so on. I sent her out with the tools, and man, has she learned how to use them.
All this and Lobby Pizza, too.
So, you ask, where are the postcards? That's for later. (2024, to be exact.) But I'll show you some of the portfolios. Always cheap, and always unique.
Glam!
Sunny and sexy. Can't really say the same about my state:
The shadow of the great Rodent God who watches over us all. Some say the 10,000 lakes were made when the great Dog God chased him when the world was new and mostly mud.
From the 10 for a buck bin: something from the Popular Mechanics Press, touting the products of . . . the Popular Mechanics Pres. This happy chap has just learned how to fix something! He's smarter than he was before.
You can be smarter, too. It's a matter of knowing what to read:
I like to think the younger chap is telling that to the older executive, who realizes he's in unfamiliar territory here. He doesn't know how to build his own house, and he feels less of a man because of it.
Or you could make money with several of these 1001 ways to shape gunk:
I wonder if anyone counted them.
Well, if it keeps him busy
Look at that handy fellow: vest, shirt, tie. Pipe clenched with jaunty carefree ease. he going to make that iron that comes out of a cupboard in the wall, he is. No more spice racks.
This was an archetype men were expected to admire, and want to be. Handy with things.
Start them early! I suppose this is the equivalent of learning to code and use Instagram filters. But not really.
Magic and bird houses! Calling all All-American boys. Give your boy the opportunity he seeks to make and ear the tings he wants and you give him an endless source of joy, inspiration and self-reliance.
No lies detected there.
Here are some of the many, many books about building your own home:
A rare misstep. No man wants to build a wee home. At least not for himself.
That's more like it. It might be small, but it is DELUXE.
I wonder if there ws a plan no one ever built. For that matter, I wonder how many men did build ther own, using just these books.
Once you understood some basics, it couldn't be that hard.
Could it?
What if you did everything right and it fell apart in the first hard storm?
It’s 1967.
This is a very 1967 front page. I don’t say that as praise. It’s utilitarian, though; gets the job done. The headlines float in a box.
Forty-nine Marines killed.
Fun on the farm:
He pled temporary insanity, due to years of “pent-up” fear over his father’s behavior; he got five years. If I have the right obit, he died in 2011 at the age of sixty, leaving wife and four children.
. . . as the great 20th century American statesman Curly Q. Howard famously proclaimed, “Truth is stranger than fiction, judgey wudgey.”
And so it is with State v. Frederick Martineau and Russell Nelson, a pair of Rhode Island thugs who one cold February night went to visit a rich industrialist named Maurice Gagnon to try, so the story goes, to talk him out of testifying against them in some burglary they had allegedly perpetrated at Gagnon’s Lincoln, R.I. home.
Well, it’s not that strange. The article is not written with particular clarity. Seems the cops picked the two up before the body was discovered. That’s it.
Anyway, they kept getting stays, then the death penalty was abolished, and they were paroled in 1973.
A 76-year-old career criminal who once slipped the hangman’s noose -- literally -- in New Hampshire was arrested by federal agents in Attleboro yesterday as part of a massive regional cocaine ring.
Frederick Martineau 76 now of North Providence R.I. was one of three men arrested yesterday by state and federal agents who say they caught them with 4 kilograms of cocaine -- worth about $320000 -- and $25000 cash.
THE CLASH OF THE DESTROYERS
They don’t report things like this anymore.
Uh -
Okay. Well, Pedernales was the name of the Texas electric company LBJ helped out in the 30s. It was a river near his birthplace. I guess that was common knowledge. Point of the cartoon: he is obsessed with communism, I guess.
I don’t know, could’ve been good
But it most certainly wasn’t. Nothing on YouTube - but we have the opening credits of the show it pre-empted. Theme by Quincy Jones!
I'm a sucker for these.
Attack of the sexy lava-lamp ladies?
Common-Law Wife was from 1963. Wikipedia quotes a critic:
Common Law Wife "crosses the line" like crazy, and the old and new footage cuts back-and-forth with absolutely no sense of rhythm - but as an example of what can sometimes happen to a film to make it "more commercial," it's a fascinating diversion for cinephiles. You see, Sayers was able to retain the services of some erstwhile cast members like Anne MacAdams and George Edgely, but Lacey Kelly was no longer available for reshoots.
Therefore, the all-important role of "Baby Doll" is played in the final cut, with Buchanan's color footage dumbed-down to grainy black-and-white, by two completely different women. Ms. Kelly's unnamed replacement is disguised in some early shots with sunglasses and a series of preposterous hats, but it's ultimately a fact impossible to cover up.
As long as someone took their top off for five seconds, no one cared.
So: how long will you last?
“I got an idea for a two-panel cartoon.”
“What’s it about?”
“Brace yourself, it’s really something fresh.”
That'll do! Enjoy some 1958 booze ads of a Canadian variety.
